Luke 24:31-32, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised Him…
‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road…?’”

On the Emmaus road, Jesus met the disciples where they were at and walked with them. They started from not recognising who Jesus was, thinking He was a stranger, to having their hearts burning as they realised He was the risen Christ.

What are the needs in your community? Where are people at? How can you walk alongside them and help them on their journey? This list is a starting point to think about how you can walk with people where they are at and lead them to the place where their hearts burn. The common danger is that we only do the first part – walk with them, but don’t share the gospel, the very reason we are driven by compassion to walk with them. These may be seen as ‘soft touch’, but the gospel reason must remain explicit to our purpose.

Important to these is the chance we have to reverse the generational fracturing of society by bringing them together in different ways.

Reading
Helping out at the local primary school with children’s reading skills, or reading them stories, like a story time.

Elderly/people with disabilities
There are lots of opportunities, whether that’s assisting the carers and getting alongside families with elderly members in care (or in their home). Sitting and chatting with them, reading to them, playing board games, assisted walking, organising small trips, and even preparing for death.

Babysitting
You might have some young families in the village, or maybe a new housing estate. These families may not have family close by and could do with a hand with looking after the children. They do say, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’

Parenting skills
In a generationally fractured society, many parents today haven’t been taught how to parent well, or at all. This could be an opportunity to connect with Health Visitors and Social Workers where needs have been identified.

Cooking skills
Many families live on ‘yellow food’ – takeaways, ready meals and junk food – and then wonder why their children have challenging behaviour. Some of this is down to not knowing how to prepare proper ‘rainbow’ meals. This offers opportunities to explore cooking, its joys and diversity, as well as enabling the children to help(!).

Lunch club
Loneliness is significant in rural areas, among families, and among the elderly. A broad-spectrum lunch club is a great place to bring people together. Soup Kitchens emerged to address poverty, and while people do still have economic issues, loneliness is considered a mark of poverty or deprivation today. Incorporated in this provision is the chance to meet with others, play games, tell stories, and make friends.

Prayer hub
People can be surprisingly open to prayer. The prayer hub is a means of enabling the community to request and engage with prayer. This might be a one-off, an ongoing need, or even a request for a visit.

Community events
From fetes to picnics, quintessential bowls on the green with strawberries and cream, afternoon teas, village sports day, film nights, village clean-up, and carols in the market square. These are opportunities to bring people together, for the ‘community spirit’, but also to walk the gospel with them.

Chaplaincies
Not necessarily the formal type you will find in a hospital, but more likely informally organised through fostering good relationships with local groups, businesses and services. You might have a large local business that employs many people from the area, a regional head office of a corporation, a large farm that employs local and/or seasonal workers, a historical building or ruin, a hall with gardens, a business or retail park, tourist attractions, trails, etc. Getting to know them, building trust and offering help and support to the staff. When key life events happen, chaplains can be well placed to offer pastoral assistance.

This is not an exhaustive list, and all of these opportunities can be adapted to the given context and capacity of those looking to be salt and light in their rural contexts.